


Is it a Monster?

by theLiterator



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Immortality, M/M, Tentacle Monsters, Vampirism is flexible, minor Bloodplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-30
Updated: 2015-12-30
Packaged: 2018-05-10 09:10:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5579704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theLiterator/pseuds/theLiterator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>”We are NOT soldiers!” Tony snaps, and Steve stares at him. Before, he’d thought he’d just </i>looked<i> like his father, but now-- There is a spark in Tony’s eyes that Steve has seen before, a fierce determination that Steve remembers well, and…</i></p><p>Steve shook his head to dislodge the memories, and he carefully pulled one of the photos free of its place in the file. It was one Steve remembered well; Stark had his arm draped around Steve’s shoulder; he was smiling with manic excitement and leaning into Steve’s personal space like he belonged there. (<i>Because</i> he belonged there.)</p><p>“Whoever you are,” Steve murmured, staring at the photograph. “I’m going to figure you out.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Is it a Monster?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Goda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goda/gifts).



> I went with the vampire prompt because it gave me _ideas_ , but this is decidedly less dark and bloody than most vampire aus. I hope it suits!
> 
> Title from "Monster" by the Automatic which I may have listened to way too many times while writing this.
> 
> Set immediately post-Avengers.

It was the first chance Steve’d had to get Tony-- Howard? He was so certain this man was _Howard_ \-- _Stark_ alone since he’d seen under his helmet and the world wasn’t ending, and he seized the other man’s arm and slammed him against a wall.

“We need to talk,” he said in a low, threatening voice, ignoring the parallels, the way it reminded him of _other_ things, of the war.

“No, we really don’t,” Stark replied. “ _I_ need to go back to running my company, and _you_ need to go back to… representing the apple pie lifestyle. I’m sure there’s a picket fence just _dying_ for you to go and paint it white and hoist a flag.”

Steve took a step back, frowning. “That… that doesn’t even make any sense. I just-- I have to know. I need to know _how_.”

Howard-- Tony? shook his head. “No, you don’t,” he said, looking suddenly sadder and more lonely than Steve had ever seen Howard look, and he almost considered that he might be _wrong_. “No one was _ever_ supposed to know. Look; I’ll-- I’ll think about it. Let me--”

He shook his head. “Here,” he said, thrusting a small satchel into Steve’s hands. “Take care.”

Steve unzipped it and stared inside; there was nothing but stacks of hundred dollar bills, neatly wrapped, looking back up at him.

He choked on his own saliva and tried to think, and then he looked up at where Stark should have been but he was already gone.

Steve turned back the way he’d come and ran into Barton, who frowned at him. “What was that about?” he asked, expression unreadable behind his dark glasses.

“I wish I knew,” Steve replied.

Clint shrugged. “Tasha said he’s like that. Don’t take it personally; he’s kind of a dick.”

“Is he?” Steve asked. “Listen, I’m going to… go. Do I need-- before, I had an escort whenever I left the site.”

“‘The site’?” Barton asked. “No, never mind. Hang on, let me go find Tash, she’s probably dying for some fresh air.”

“I thought maybe you and I could--” Steve began, feeling steadily more alienated by the people around him. If _Barton_ didn’t want to join him--

“I can’t,” he said curtly. “Confined to quarters pending psych review. Also they’ll probably want me to let an actual psychic review me, which I’m just super excited for.” He lowered his sunglasses and peered over them at Steve. “Otherwise, do you really think anyone would miss out on an opportunity to have lunch with _the_ Captain America?”

“Tony just did,” Tash? Natasha? Romanov said from behind him. “And I’m escorting _both_ of you to lunch.”

Barton didn’t argue, and Steve could see his smile in his eyes before he shoved his glasses back into place and hid his expression from view.

***

 

Romanov took them out into the city. Rubble still clogged the streets, but the people didn’t seem to notice; they were all going about their days, rushing into and out of the subway stations, heads bent avidly over their telephone screens.

Steve got distracted, watching them; he liked to think that this was one thing that hadn’t changed. Old Man Cassidy would have been exactly the same; he might have kicked a chunk of concrete or spat on an alien corpse, but he wouldn’t have let a little thing like the end of the world interrupt his life.

“C’mon, old man,” Romanov said, taking his hand in hers when he stared at her, unable to recognize her for a few embarrassing seconds. “Wouldn’t want you to get lost.”

He tried to smile for her, and she quirked her lips back, and it was the closest thing to friendliness she’d shown to any of them except Stark in the entire time he’d known her.

“Okay,” he replied. “But maybe you’d better buy me a map, just in case.”

Her smile broadened at the joke, and he thought maybe he could get to like her. She was a lot more self-contained than he generally preferred, but it was a new era, a new _world_ , and not every person he befriended had to have the same personality.

They sat down just inside a cafe and Romanov wouldn’t let either of them look at menus; instead, she ordered for them in flawless French that Steve did his best to follow.

He noticed her noticing _that_ , and remembered that she had been the one to put together the file on Tony Stark.

“I have a question,” Steve said, low enough that the general background noise of the cafe would prevent anyone from easily eavesdropping. “How well do you know Stark?”

Romanov shrugged and sipped on her table water. “Not very well. He understands secrets.”

“What?” Steve asked.

Barton smirked. “It means he realizes that only one person can keep a secret, not two, not your diary, not your cat.”

“Tony has a cat?” Steve asked, hoping for _any_ scrap of information.

Romanov shrugged. “Not that I know of,” she said.

Steve grimaced. “Does he have a wife?” Which was a terribly prurient thing to ask, and the weird mix of jealousy and pride that formed in his gut at the _idea_ of Stark being married was kind of ridiculous. He knew he was blushing.

Romanov laughed.

Frustration was building in him, and he wanted, suddenly, the surety of his fake-boxing club stage in the basement of SHIELD. He wanted…

He wanted the _ice_ , that sweet nothing that had promised him that he wouldn’t feel the ache of missing--

Barton kicked his shin sharply, and Steve looked up at him, fighting the simmering fury down.

“Don’t go there, man,” he said, voice rough. “Just-- don’t. We need you.”

Steve snorted. “You need a patsy.”

“Fair,” Romanov said. “But I have been that, and it isn’t so bad.”

“You?” Steve demanded.

Romanov shrugged. “I have been everything, once or twice.”

Her smile was enigmatic, and Steve wondered what it was she was implying.

***

Steve didn’t care, anymore, about propriety, so as soon as they were back at site, he veered away from the others and towards where he knew the archives to be, not bothering to sneak.

There was no one manning the clerk’s desk, which was just as well; he of all people had only a very restricted access to the SHIELD archives, and what little access he did have was monitored carefully.

He still remembered the day he’d come in to find a psychiatrist, all bland smiles and lies, ready to _talk_ about his losses.

As if anyone could possibly understand his losses.

It had been as if his entire _world_ had disappeared, all in the blink of an eye, and everyone kept trying--

Kept--

He shut off that line of thought and made his way to the back of the room, to Howard Stark’s personnel file, and he stared at the pictures for long, disbelieving minutes.

 _”We are NOT soldiers!” Tony snaps, and Steve stares at him. Before, he’d thought he’d just_ looked _like his father, but now-- There is a spark in Tony’s eyes that Steve has seen before, a fierce determination that Steve remembers well, and…_

Steve shook his head to dislodge the memories, and he carefully pulled one of the photos free of its place in the file. It was one Steve remembers well; Stark had his arm draped around Steve’s shoulder; he was smiling with manic excitement and leaning into Steve’s personal space like he belonged there. ( _Because_ he belonged there.)

“Whoever you are,” Steve murmured, staring at the photograph. “I’m going to figure you out.”

***

The cash bought him a motorcycle that actually looked like a motorcycle, not a prop from a science fiction special, and he stared at her, smiling a little at her clean lines and the gleam of her paint job.

“Nice choice,” Barton said, startling Steve into whirling, arms up like he had his shield. “Whoa, sorry.” Barton had his hands up too, but with the dark glasses, Steve couldn’t tell if he was upset or just reacting on instinct.

“I came to talk to you,” Barton said slowly, and Steve relaxed his stance. “Fury wants us in the wind. He’s worried about the stuff with the nuke.”

Steve still hadn’t asked what a nuke was supposed to be.

He desperately hoped no one would realize he didn’t know and tell him. The cold feeling in his guts from the way everyone spoke about them was more than enough knowledge for him, for now.

He’d ask when he was ready.

He _would_.

“Okay,” Steve said, when he realized he’d been silent for far too long.

“Tash wanted me to make sure you had liquid assets and a plan,” Barton said.

“I have a motorcycle,” Steve said, touching her again, reverently. Stark had said--

“I see that,” Barton replied, smirking again. “Is there more where that came from?”

“What?” Steve asked, and then he remembered the satchel and the cash. “Yeah, a little bit.”

“Cool,” Barton said, tossing him a little device. “That’s your emergency phone. Keep it on you, use it if you’ve got an emergency.”

Steve stared at it. “It doesn’t look like a phone,” he said, thinking of the chrome and glass things that everyone claimed were telephones. This thing was a beat up chunk of plastic with a little gray screen. It opened on a hinge, and Steve could see there were numbers lined up in a square, not at all like a proper phone.

“It is,” Barton said, laughing a little under his breath. “Believe me.”

***

Steve didn’t tell any of them where he planned on going; just smiled his goodbyes and taken the motorcycle out of the city.

He didn’t try to speak with Stark again, he didn’t want to face the disappointment or the frustration in public, and perhaps that was selfish, or perhaps not.

It didn’t matter; it was _his_ decision.

His alone, for the first time in years, in… decades, technically, and he wanted to make the few choices he’d be allowed _count._

He’d found out from Romanov where Stark lived when he wasn’t in New York, and he made his way across the country, staying in small towns and eating at family restaurants and farmer’s stands, breathing in fresh air for the first time in his life.

The tang of pollution was missing from these middle states; the taste of gunsmoke death was missing too, not that he missed _that_.

Much.

It was enough time to clear his thoughts, so that when he wound around a private beach drive in Malibu (Malibu! He’d never thought he’d get to see California properly, not once he’d stopped touring with the USO, and here he was, just like Stark’d-- just like he’d hoped.)

He kicked down his kickstand and left the motorcycle propped in the drive, and entered without knocking.

It was rude, sure, but he severely doubted that Stark would let him in if he _asked_ , and there was too much missing, too much history they hadn’t had, to have Stark turn him away at the door.

“Your presence is not authorized, Captain Rogers,” a distinguished British voice echoed through the room.

“Uh, sorry?” Steve offered, looking around for the source.

“Mister Stark is in the workshop,” the voice replied. “If you’ll follow the lights, please.”

“I thought I wasn’t authorized?” Steve asked.

“In order to authorize your presence, Mister Stark must know of it,” the voice intoned dryly.

“Of course,” Steve muttered, trying to suppress a laugh and failing, so he was chuckling as he descended the steps into the workshop.

It was…

Familiar chaos; steel and wires strewn everywhere, Stark at the heart of it, chest and eyes aglow. Steve still wondered about the chest-thing; the file hadn’t been particularly forthcoming about that, and besides, he hadn’t cared as much about that before he’d realized...

“Rogers,” Stark snapped. “JARVIS, why is Rogers in my house?”

JARVIS, then, the voice from before, replied, “He entered unannounced.”

“JARVIS,” Stark said furiously. “You could have had him _leave_ unannounced.”

“Indeed, sir,” JARVIS replied, and Stark groaned and strode around the table.

“What do you _want_?” Stark demanded, standing too close, anger sparking between them.

“I want answers,” Steve replied.

Stark barked out a rough, angry laugh. “Answers? Really? Now?”

“After 70 years, I think I deserve some, don’t you, _Howard_?” Steve demanded. “I thought you were my _friend_. I thought we-- I _trusted_ you!”

“That’s the thing they never tell you about trust, Cap,” Stark said, reaching for a bottle of amber alcohol and pouring it into his mug. “It’s not _actually_ a two-way street.”

He offered Steve the bottle, and Steve declined, shaking his head.

“Look, it’s nothing personal,” Stark said, and his tone was so _familiar_ that Steve ached with it. “Hell, I would have-- after the war. I mean, you deserved to--” Stark took a long sip of his drink and grimaced.

“I’ve been dying, slowly and quickly, throughout the years, and it never really takes. And then Erskine had his formula, and I knew I could-- I knew I could help, and I liked the idea of _participating_. You weren’t supposed to find out.”

“Find out that you… what, you found the fountain of youth?” Steve asked.

Stark laughed and knocked back the rest of his drink, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand after. “No, not even close. Here, take my hand,” he ordered, and Steve complied, curling his fingers around the familiar appendage. It felt like it always had, before, strong and sure and calloused in his grip.

“What do you feel?” Stark asked, leaning forward.

“Uh,” Steve replied. Usually, before, he’d have leaned in too, closed the distance, but he’d come too far to be distracted from his questions. “Your hand?”

“Yes; my hand, skin, but what _else_?”

Steve frowned at him. “Look, How-- Tony. I don’t know what it is you want, but--”

“It’s _cold_ ,” Stark said.

“Of course it’s cold,” Steve snapped. “You’ve always had cold hands.”

Stark stared at him.

Steve stared back.

“The movies lie, Rogers,” Stark said, his tone of voice painfully familiar, teasing and wry. “Never forget that.”

“I don’t understand,” Steve said, voice quiet. Stark took his hand back gently.

“I can see that. JARVIS, we still have guest rooms, right?” Stark asked.

“Of course, sir.” The voice made Steve startle and jerk back, worried about his impropriety being witnessed. “Captain Rogers, if you’ll follow my lights again, I’ll see to it that you have suitable quarters.”

“Uh,” Steve said, blushing.

Stark laughed. “Go, sleep. We’ll talk in the morning, once I figure out--” Stark bit his lip and shrugged. “Once I come up with a way to say it.”

***

Steve remembered the war. Well-- of _course_ he remembered the war. He remembered the chill damp of the German winter and the taste of his c-rations. He remembered.

He remembered the way Howard Stark had told him to stop waiting for _Peggy_ and to just--

_Stark smirks at him. He’s got a smudge of oil on his cheek, and Steve hopes it’s motor oil and not gun oil, because the latter’ll leave a mark, and then he’s not thinking about that at all, because the funny robot glove is still on Stark’s hand, and Stark is using it to shove Steve into the supply closet._

_Steve gasps and Stark surges up to kiss him as he slams the door shut behind them, and Steve tries to come up with something to say, but-- “C’mon, pal, give a buddy a hand, I’m thinking too much, I need,” Stark is mumbling against his lips, and he’s dragging Steve's hand down to his crotch, and Steve gasps again at the feeling of someone else in his_ hand _, hot and--_

 _”C’mon,” Stark snaps, impatient, eyes sparking with the same bright intelligence they always have, while Steve is reduced to_ nothing _just based on the headiness of a bit of a kiss._

 _It_ infuriates _Steve, so he slams Stark up against the wall and Stark hisses out a triumphant_ yes _and Steve freezes._

_”Wait,” Steve whispers. “Are you--”_

_”I’ve done this before, pal, if that’s what you’re worried about.” Stark laughs for a moment. “You won’t break me. You_ can’t _,” he adds, suddenly sober. “Trust me.”_

_”I--” Steve starts, shakes his head. Starts again. “I haven’t. But--”_

_”If it helps, Steve,” Stark says, still serious. “I trust_ you _.” And then he grins again, all Stark charm and verve._

_Steve is expecting it this time, and he kisses back._

***

Honestly, if Stark hadn’t done it during the war, Steve might have lost half his hair from fright when he woke from a dead sleep to Stark perched on his chest, draped all over with electric mechanical gewgaws, staring intently at him.

The glowing gem of technology embedded in Stark’s chest drenched the night in a blue surrealism that woke Steve more thoroughly from his sleep than Stark alone could have.

“Oh, good,” Stark said. “You’re awake.”

“Yes,” Steve said, smiling at him from the sheer relief of the familiar. “Had a thought, then?”

“Hmm,” Stark said.

“Do you need me to take dictation?” Steve asked, still amused.

“Do I need-- what? Yes, actually. No. Wait. JARVIS takes my dication, these days.”

Steve felt his smile fading, and then Stark shook his head. “No! I mean, yes, he does, but I didn’t forget and wake you up for no reason, or, or, or, what.”

“Perhaps he feels replaced, sir?” JARVIS suggested, because of course he was in the bedroom too.

“Replaced? You, Steve? I _created_ you!”

“Doctor Erskine did, actually,” Steve said primly. “You just pulled some levers.”

Stark laughed, throwing his head back, and Steve watched the way his shoulders relaxed into the mirth. “Of course, yes, that too, God, Steve.”

Suddenly sober again, he bent to stare into Steve’s eyes, his pupils oddly small despite the low light.

“Believe me, I wanted to tell you, I did, I swear--”

“So tell me, Stark,” Steve said gently.

Stark blinked dully at him and worked his mouth soundlessly for a few moments, then he shook his head.

“You should sleep more, Stark,” he said fondly, instead of demanding his answers again. It wasn’t as if he didn’t know the most important part already.

“How can you possibly know that?” Stark demanded.

“I know _you_ , pal,” Steve replied, echoing a thousand previous conversations.

“So you do,” Stark replied easily.

“So put whatever that thing you’re wearing is back in the workshop, and come to bed,” Steve snapped, greatly daring.

“Can’t turn off my mind, lately,” Stark said, regret in his voice, and maybe exhaustion, if Steve wasn’t imagining that.

“I can help with that,” Steve offered, trailing fingers up Stark’s side. “Unless JARVIS does _that_ now too.”

Stark huffed out a laugh and pulled his hand free to strip off the mechanical harness and then his clothes. “Hardly,” he said. “There are some things even _I_ can't replicate.”

Steve smirked and pulled him down into the bed with him. Whatever Stark was calling himself, _this_ was them.

***

Steve watched Stark as he slept, curled next to him with his hands tucked under his cheek, and after a few hours, he forced himself to roll out of the bed and shut the bedroom door behind him.

“JARVIS,” Steve whispered.

“How may I help you?” JARVIS replied, somewhat more loudly.

“Has _he_ got anything so mundane and necessary as a kitchen?”

JARVIS lit up some more lights for him. “Of course, Captain.”

Stark stumbled into the kitchen about an hour later, and Steve deftly dropped a plate in front of him.

“Food?” Stark asked, squinting up at him.

“Food,” Steve replied. “And coffee, but JARVIS made that. I didn’t have anyone to pull the levers.”

Stark snorted into his eggs.

After the first mug of coffee had been inhaled, Stark looked up at him, much more focused than before. “I didn’t bring you here to look after me, I’ve already got one of those,” he said.

“You didn’t bring me here at all,” Steve pointed out, and then something started ringing.

“That’s you,” Stark said after the second ring.

“What’s me?” Steve asked.

“Well, JARVIS handles all of my phone calls, and you’re the only unknown variable,” Stark said.

“Phone calls?” Steve repeated, and then he fumbled awkwardly in his pocket for the little plastic _thing_ Barton had given him.

He stared at it.

“What the hell is _that_?” Stark demanded, sounding affronted.

Steve opened it and gingerly positioned it against his ear. “Hello?”

“You’re in L.A., right?” Romanov asked curtly.

“Yes,” Steve said, not bothering to ask how she knew.

“Well, I need you to get to Lake Mead in a hurry and coordinate with agents on-site; something odd’s going on.”

“Something odd? That’s a little thin for a mission brief,” Steve said.

“Have Stark get you down there,” she said, ignoring his question.

“Understood, ma’am,” he replied.

She didn’t say anything, and the line made no noise to indicate it had been disconnected.

“This is offensive,” Stark said, taking it from him. “I refuse to allow the Avengers to be seen with this, this, this-- what is it? I assume it’s an untraceable phone, but it doesn’t have to be _ugly_ to be untraceable.”

“They said it was for emergencies,” Steve said. “And you can invent something better later; we apparently need to go to Lake Mead.”

“Why?” Stark demanded.

Steve shrugged. “I don’t know, she said it was… odd.”

Stark snorted, and then he stood up and led the way to the workshop. “Come on, Captain America, let’s go solve the North American Water Crisis.”

“What?” Steve asked, but he didn’t hear Stark’s reply.

***

The Hoover Dam was an _impossible_ thing, and Steve knew he was staring.

It had been a sort of myth-- it was in the papers, sure, and Steve had of course read about it as much as he could, because it was a modern marvel, and he’d always been one for modern marvels-- and when they got to the top of it, with the statues for the workers and the gleaming white concrete, he couldn’t help but press a hand flat up against it.

“If I’d’ve known you were this easy to impress,” Stark said, bending to collect the suitcase his armor had folded itself into, “I would have brought you here a week ago.”

Steve turned to him and used his hand to shade his eyes against the glare of the desert sun. “We were fighting off an alien invasion and a god a week ago.”

“Thought you didn’t think they were gods,” Stark replied, a smirk playing in the lines around his mouth.

Steve snorted.

“So, what are we looking for?” Stark asked after a few moments.

“Anything odd,” Steve repeated for the 15th time.

“Well, that narrows it-- oh. Protesters!” Stark turned in the direction of the ragtag people clustered at the side of the road, all armed with signs and… what appeared to be a pallet of plastic drums, in a standoff against park rangers.

“Well,” Stark said. “This is _odd_ , isn’t it, Steve?”

“Stark,” Steve replied slowly.

“Exactly, it’s very odd. Hi, Tony Stark, you may have heard of me, how are you, what’s up,” he said, working his way into the standoff with his usual ease in a crowd, Steve trailing behind him in a way that was utterly unfamiliar.

“What’s going on here?” Tony asked, smiling and offering his hand to the person with a megaphone (and was it attached to a radio? He couldn’t make out the purpose of the handpiece attached to the thing, and he wanted to _ask_ but he thought it was probably rude and would definitely undermine the impression of suave competence Stark was giving off.

“They’re dumping illegally,” one of the rangers snapped.

“Well, now, that isn’t very nice; do you know how many millions of people get their drinking water from Lake Mead?”

“A lot,” the woman with the megaphone replied coldly.

“20 million,” one of the other rangers said. “I mean, give or take.”

Steve smiled reassuringly at him, and the guy next to him elbowed him rather cruelly.

“We weren’t doing anything wrong!” the woman with the megaphone shouted.

“That’s actually-- do we have proof that they were dumping illegally?” Steve asked, trying his level best to look stern, though that had never worked when he was trying to maintain order on the front lines. Battles, he could do.

There was a slick slurp-slurping noise from behind them, and Steve didn’t really _want_ to turn around.

“Maybe the giant squid monster can clear it up for us,” the ranger from before replied.

Steve turned around.

It was enormous and glistening wetly in the desert sun, and it seemed to hover above the edge of the dam for a moment before slamming down into the group of protesters.

“Well shit,” Steve said.

Stark burst into motion, dropping his briefcase to the ground and aligning his body so his armor could encase him. Once he was completely armored, he grabbed some loose bit of technology that hadn’t assembled with the suit and tossed it at Steve.

It looked vaguely like a gauntlet, so he slipped it on his hand, and immediately it lit up with a golden glowing image of his shield.

“It’s a bosonic-photonic construct, Cap,” Stark said from above him. “I’ll go high, you go low.”

Steve, despite having no idea what that meant, decided to trust Stark, who had, after all, built his original shield, and charged in.

The thing was huge: it had suckers the size of dinner plates and tentacles as large around as Steve’s thighs, and when he drove his shield into its tentacle, it didn’t even flounder.

“Well,” he said to himself. “That’s exciting.”

He changed the angle of his arm on the approach and the golden shield sliced through the flesh, but only enough to make it scream in agony, not to do any real damage.

Steve clamped his hands to his ears and looked around. Most of the civilians had scattered, but the park rangers were still clustered nearby, and someone had brought them rifles.

“Okay,” he said, and then he charged again.

Iron Man was somewhere above him, dancing through the sky with the sounds of his repulsor technology punctuating the sounds of fighting.

The rangers opened fire and the thing reared up, still screaming, and plucked Iron Man from midair, using him as a shield if the plink-plink-plink of bullets on metal were any indication.

Suddenly, someone lit flares, and the thing flinched away from the heat and light, dropping Iron Man and scuttling back to fall into Lake Mead.

The splash drenched them all.

“Well,” Steve said. “That’s going to be fun to look for.”

“Iron Man is down,” one of the rangers said, voice thin with panic.

Steve made his way over to Stark, who was laying in a pool of slime and blood, and frowned. “You need medical attention,” Steve said, kneeling beside him and trying to keep calm. The armor had been crushed around his torso, split open like a tin can and cutting into his skin. Stark had shed most of it, but there were places that the razor sharp metal had clung.

“I don’t,” Stark said. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you; or trying not to tell you. Steve, I--”

There was something wrong with Stark’s teeth; his canines were elongated and when he licked his lips and swallowed, they poked through his closed lips.

“I’ve called dispatch,” a ranger hollered. “We’ll have EMTs in less than 20 minutes.”

“I don’t need EMTs,” Stark said. “I need-- blood. It’ll fix _all_ of this.”

“Okay,” Steve replied. Steve turned his head back towards the rangers and the rest of the people. “See to the civilians!” Steve shouted in the rangers’ direction. “I’ve got Iron Man under control.” _I hope_ , Steve didn’t add.

“Okay?” Stark demanded. “Just like that, okay? I’m going to have to _drink_ it, it’s not something I’m exactly proud of, I just--”

Steve peeled off the light-shield-glove-thing that Stark had handed him, and then he stared at his wrist for a long minute, then he offered it to Stark, angling his body so that Stark couldn’t be seen by anybody who wasn’t directly overhead.

“Looks like you’ve got better tools for this than I do,” he said.

“What?” Stark demanded.

“You need blood,” Steve said reasonably. “Take mine.”

“That’s insane. You’re insane. Oh, god, I can’t feel my legs.” Stark shut his eyes hard and shook his head. “How can you believe me?”

“Are you Howard Stark, one of my closest and dearest friends, mad genius-slash-inventor-slash-pilot?” Steve asked.

“Yes, damnit, of course I am!” Stark snapped.

“Then of course I believe you.”

Stark didn’t argue any further, which was the most out-of-character thing he’d done since Steve had arrived in Malibu, and bit into the sensitive skin at Steve’s wrist.

It _hurt_ , because of course it did, but the low groan of satisfaction from Stark set his nerves afire.

“Okay?” Steve asked quietly, once it seemed like Stark was spending more time licking his arm than drinking his blood.

Everyone was still well back from them, and the EMTs hadn’t yet arrived.

“Yeah,” Stark breathed, and _now_ his pupils were blown huge, where they hadn’t been in the dead of night. “Yeah, I’m good. We’re good.”

The lines around Stark’s eyes had smoothed out, and where his beard had been flecked with gray, it was a solid brown again, and Steve blinked, trying to make the memory of Tony, his memory of Howard, and this newly younger Stark resolve.

“Well, that’s new,” he said, and then he gestured at Stark’s heart, which was still aglow with the light of the arc reactor. “What about--”

“My one weakness,” Stark said, snorting.

Steve offered him a hand up, and they went to stare over the edge of the dam where the creature had disappeared.

“So,” Steve said. “Illegally dumping. But what?”

“I’d guess some sort of mutagen,” Stark replied. “Or maybe just a food offering.”

 

Steve shivered. Sirens were just becoming audible, and he looked around to assess the damage again.

“You know, this is not at all how I pictured the Hoover Dam,” Steve said conversationally.

“Steve Rogers, ladies and gentlemen,” Stark muttered under his breath.

“What was that?” Steve asked, smiling and resisting the urge to check the damage to Stark’s torso. No need to bring further attention to the newly-healed injury than he already had.

“Nothing,” Stark said, and then he darted up to press a chaste kiss to Steve’s lips. “Nothing at all. Just glad-- just glad you’re back.”

Steve jerked his shoulder in a half shrug and his smile grew brighter. “Aliens, gods, evil freshwater squid? I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

“And me?” Stark asked.

Steve bumped their shoulders together.

“Actually, I do have one question,” he said. “Where are the three sisters?”

Stark stared at him in familiar stunned disbelief for a few moments, mouth working noiselessly.

“You know, I’m not _actually_ Dracula,” Stark finally snapped, and Steve laughed.


End file.
